


Some Like It Hoth

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Cooking, First Kiss, Food and Tenderness, M/M, cuddling for warmth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23254201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Finn and Poe run a mission to somewhere very cold. Things change.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 13
Kudos: 87
Collections: All The Nice Things Flash Exchange 2020





	Some Like It Hoth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivulet027](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivulet027/gifts).



> sorry about the title, I could not help myself  
> thanks to Ny for a key line of dialogue

Everyone warned Finn about this mission. As soon as they heard where Finn was headed — an abandoned communications station on the far side of the ice moon of Muirsyn — they said, "Dameron's not going, is he?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Poe demanded when he overheard Pava ask Finn that question.

"You don't handle the cold well." Pava was unblinking and grave. "Not exactly a secret."

"I handle the cold fine!" Poe reared back in outrage; whether it was feigned or not was unclear. "What're you talking about? I'm very hardy!"

"You whimper and complain the moment you see your own breath."

"Well, sure! That's not natural!"

Pava smiled, her eyes ticking back and forth between Finn and Poe. "Like I said. You hate the cold."

"I'm not that bad," Poe insisted. He elbowed Finn as punctuation. "I'm not, man. Truly. As a matter of fact, I was conceived—"

"On Hoth," Pava put in, then expertly ducked away from Poe's mimed slap. Over her shoulder, as she headed down the passage, she added, "Good luck on the mission, Finn. Lucky you, getting a Hoth native to go along."

"Hoth?" Finn asked Poe. "Tell me about Hoth."

Beaming, Poe slung his arm around Finn's shoulder. "Where do I even start? Hoth! Home of heroes and rebels, icy wastes full of danger and adventure! Sparkling crystalline world of challenge and, if you're my parents, apparently ion-cannon-hot horny. _Hoth._ " 

He didn't actually remember the place, Poe admitted eventually. What he did know about Hoth, he'd gathered in bits and pieces from educational holos and his father's reminiscences. Finn knew a bit more about its biodiversity and history, as it turned out.

"It's cold, that much is true," Poe said, "very cold." He paused and straightened his posture. "Luckily, I can handle that." 

"Technically, your mom kept you warm there, though," Finn said. 

Poe bobbed his head in agreement before he changed the subject.

*

Right now, Poe has to be expending more energy than he can afford trying to keep warm. He insisted on patrolling the perimeter of this decrepit comms station and only barely managed to return in the midst of the cryovolcano's eruption.

Best practices say one should warm gradually, wrapped in layers, while, of course, remaining still.

Poe, however, is rocking back and forth as well as side to side, quickly and irregularly enough that his blankets keep sliding off. He rubs his hands constantly, stamps his feet every so often, and all but _vibrates_. Whether that's with frustration, impatience, or some other emotion, Finn doesn't know. Nor is he in much of a hurry to find out.

"Is it ready?" Poe asks, kicking at the rickety legs of the cooker.

Finn takes his time to finish checking the meal, then dusts off his hands. "Give it a little time, man."

"I'm dying! No one has ever been this cold!"

"You're far from dying," Finn says. "For one thing, if you were dying, you'd be a lot quieter."

"You were the one who said I needed a hot meal!"

"Right, blame me, definitely all my fault," Finn says lightly as he checks the soup again. "It's almost there. You know what they say: A little pot is soon hot."

"Seriously?" The fervor in Poe's voice is a lot stronger and more sincere than his usual half-ironic whining. "Fuck that!"

"What?" Finn sits back on his heels and wills his breathing to stay regular. "Why are you pissed?"

Head in his hands, the layers of blankets making an outsize hood around him, Poe shrugs, then spreads his fingers to peek through. "Sorry," he mumbles. "I thought — never mind. Sorry."

"Eat," Finn says, pouring out the hot soup into their single large bowl-slash-cup and passing it over. "It'll help you think."

"Attributing _a lot_ to some soup, you know," Poe says and blows over the steaming surface.

"It's pretty good soup." 

Poe slurps down half the soup in what looks like a single motion. Then he fans his open mouth against the burn. When he settles down again and passes the bowl to Finn, he says, "How are you so calm, anyway?"

"Am I?" Finn sips the soup carefully. It tastes pretty wonderful, if he does say so himself: to a standard freeze-pak of protein bouillon, he'd added mushrooms and several dashes of brandy in addition to spare fat-cubes and Poe's favorite beans from Yavin.

"Not like you ever get, I don't know, freaked-out and worked-up, but —"

"Of course I do," Finn says. He hands the bowl back and considers advising Poe to drink more slowly this time. He's not Poe's boss, nor is he his parent, however, so he doesn't. "All the time."

Poe peers at him through the steam rising off the soup. All his layers reduce him to a vague, humped shape, but his eyes and brows, shadowed as they are, remain sharply expressive. "Really?"

"Hell, yeah. Have we met?" Finn sticks out his hand and after a moment, grinning, Poe takes it. Their thick mittens crinkle loudly in the sudden quiet blooming between them. It has become increasingly difficult, these last several months since Crait, to come out the other side of these moments — which keep happening, both regularly and unpredictably all at once — and continue pretending nothing happened. 

Or that nothing will change? Or has changed. Is in the process of shifting. Tectonic shifts, or glaciers on the steady, yet imperceptible, move.

Poe tightens his grasp on Finn's hand. They're still staring at each other. "Why are you smiling?"

"Thinking about geography," Finn says.

Poe's eyes widen, but he doesn't let go, nor does he say anything.

"I mean," Finn starts again, then pauses, sliding along the edge of the sleeping platform to come up next to Poe. He's still got a hold on Poe's hand; their arms fold up against their chests as they get closer. "I mean, like landmasses shifting. Glaciers."

"Uh-huh." The light from the cooker plays over the surface of Poe's eyes.

"Finish your soup," Finn says, remembering belatedly what's really important. "Weren't you dying a minute ago?"

"I was," Poe says. He drinks down the soup and drops the bowl, never looking away from Finn. "I'm not now."

"I'm glad." Finn nudges Poe's layers with his near shoulder and burrows underneath. When Poe understands what he's trying to do, he lifts the blankets and pulls Finn inside.

"Small pot, soon too hot," Poe says as his arm settles around Finn's shoulder. "It's what my grampa used to say about me. I had a, um. Temper. And attention issues."

"You?" Finn still feels the cold pressing against him, bu when he inhales, he can almost taste the scent of Poe. "But you're usually so laidback."

"This is when I was a kid," Poe says, then stops. "Oh. You're making a joke."

"A _funny_ joke, yes."

"Glaciers," Poe replies. One of them lifts a leg, the other drops a shoulder, and they're closer yet, slotted together like scales on an evergreen's cone. Overlapping as much as they are separate. "Landmasses. Go on, smart guy. Tell me about 'em."

Finn shakes his head. "I keep trying to find ways to describe things."

"What things?" Poe's voice is quiet. He's so rarely quiet, except when they're alone. Finn's still holding that fact in his palm, uncertain what to do with it.

"Change," Finn says. "Life. I mean —" He swallows and nods, as if he can fend off a wisecrack or, worse, another patient question. "You and me. We keep..."

"Yeah, we do." 

They're still holding hands through their mittens. They're half-atop each other, woven together under all the blankets. Poe frowns slightly as he looks at the floor, but then he starts smiling.

"Sick of waiting for something to change," Finn says in a rush, and Poe's meeting his eyes again, truly smiling. Finn's relief floods him, something both ebullient and terrifying, but Poe cocks his head and touches Finn's cheek with his mitten, and then relief transforms into anticipation.

Poe had to drop Finn's hand to touch him, so as they start to fumble into a kiss, Finn's hand ends up pressed against Poe's chest, trapped between them. The kiss goes shallow and breathless; the cryovolcano creaks outside and the shelter shakes on its moorings. 

"Good to hear," Poe replies about half an hour later, when that initial kiss finally breaks up. They find themselves on their sides, in the damp, feverish closeness beneath the blankets. Their lips are numb, but everything else is warm, if not flashing hot.

The truly miraculous thing — though Finn forebears, for the moment, from noting it aloud — is not just the kiss, but the fact that Poe remembered what they'd been talking about. Change comes glacially, then all at once, and they roll together in the avalanche.


End file.
